SAN DIEGO — It was the sunshine that helped draw Elena Elie out to San Diego from her hometown of Edina, Minnesota, but on a gloomy Monday morning, there isn't much of it to be found in Alcala Park. Clouds abound at USD's Garden of the Sea, obscuring the picturesque spot's panoramic views of Point Loma and Mission Bay while the reflecting pool and Spanish Renaissance-inspired Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice look on. As Elie sits down for an interview that aims to recap how exactly she assembled the most impressive and diverse athletic and academic resume of any Torero in recent memory, she pays the weather no mind, smiling while perched on the southwest corner of the campus that saw her make good on an endless supply of ambition. 

"I was working hard and I was pursuing goals, but I was also just hanging out with my friends," she recalls with a touch of nostalgia, now several weeks removed from graduation. "Sitting in the sun and playing in the water…like what's better than that?"

To hear it from Elie, her last four years were challenging, but no more so than anybody else's at the small Catholic school on the hill. 

Classes came and went. She studied, worked hard, carved out time to have fun, and went about her business, the college experience largely living up to the laid-back Southern California vibe that San Diego promises. Thanks to her diligence, nervousness never came across four years of Behavioral Neuroscience final exams. Not during Chemistry or Political Science tests, either. 

"I was always like, I've prepared as much as I possibly can prepare for this test," Elie recalls. "If I can't figure it out, I can't figure it out. I know I did what I needed to do."

In the pool, where she spent a quartet of seasons competing in the breaststroke for the Toreros' Division I swimming and diving team, she admits that the customary flutter of butterflies accompanied her prior to the start of each race. But none of the finals or the races, none of those moments made Elie feel ready for what awaited her in the Jenny Craig Pavilion earlier this month at her graduation ceremony.

"I didn't expect to be so nervous," said Elie. "As soon as they started describing it, my legs actually were physically shaking…"

As university president James T. Harris III began to unveil the recipient of his campus' most prestigious undergraduate award, describing how this year's winner was the "epitome of a scholar-athlete," how "the words 'well-rounded student' fall short of capturing the commitment and service that they have demonstrated on and off campus," those sitting around Elie began to catch on.

"People were like, wait, isn't he talking about you?" she recounts with a laugh. "And I was just sitting there silent."

"I was like, I guess so."



HUMILITY ASIDE, ELIE EARNING the university's Alcala Award should have come as a surprise to no one, especially not to Elie herself. The accolade, which is the only undergraduate honor to be presented at commencement each year, aims to celebrate seniors who "exhibit an exemplary commitment to the mission of USD", those who "have achieved the balanced development that has always been a goal of a USD education." Nominees are considered based on their academic achievement, participation and leadership in extracurricular activities, citizenship and service to the university, and their potential for future achievement. Elie's resume met all of those criteria, and then some.

Where to begin? One could start with her perfect 4.00 GPA, made even more impressive when you consider it was attained while majoring in Behavioral Neuroscience and pursuing a double minor in both Chemistry and Political Science.

"Ms. Elie is the most intellectually talented student I have taught in my 39 years at USD," Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor Dr. Mitch Malachowski, PhD wrote as part of Elie's nomination for the award. "Many of her questions dug so deeply into the material, that many of the bright students in the class were not even sure what Elena's questions were all about."

Continue on to her swimming career, and the excellence continues. On a team where academic and athletic achievement go hand in hand, Elie was one of the keystones of Michael Keeler's program, which holds its own in the water while routinely placing dozens of swimmers and divers on the All-Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Academic Team.

"It was a delight to have an athlete like that," said Keeler, now in his 25th year as the Toreros' head coach. "The team would always go for her for answers — for anything — including things way out of her field…it was just an incredible joy to have somebody of that intellect, humor, and intensity in the pool." 

And then there's the volunteer work. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Elie took a gap semester and moved to a small farm in Brookings, South Dakota to help create curriculum and accompanying activities for a nature-based education camp. That, in addition to serving as the youth co-founder of an environmental group that leads service-based adventures, working as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), and volunteering as a laboratory assistant on campus. Together, a diverse and challenging mix of pursuits and vocations that would have been enough to fill out multiple people's schedules. To Elie, however, there's no questioning of why. No second-guessing if doing so much, so intently, was the right choice. For her, the only question was why not?

"If you're not growing your knowledge and making your knowledge greater, if you're not making something better, then what are you doing?" she asks earnestly. "And if someone needs help or if an organization needs fixing or if there's a lack of some factor in an area of life…or obvious problems staring at you in the face…why wouldn't you go fix them?"



EXCELLENCE IN SWIMMING came early on for Elie, her potential in the breaststroke having been identified by a coach during a swim lesson as a child. 

Excellence in the classroom didn't arrive quite as quickly.

"I actually wasn't good at school when I was little," Elie admits. "I really distinctly remember in third grade I had finally figured out how to do school. I had ADHD when I was younger, so at that point I was put on medication and I was able to sit down long enough to actually understand what was going on. But then after that I was like, no, school is definitely my thing."

Once everything fell into place for her academically, it didn't take much for Elie to stay motivated. Drawing from lessons left behind in a memoir by her grandfather, a physician who emigrated to Canada and later the United States from Haiti, she adopted a philosophy that would serve her all the way through college and beyond.

"Don't wait for tomorrow to do what's meant to be done today," Elie describes. "I guess I always lived life as tomorrow is gonna have its own obligation, so you better focus and get everything done that you need to get done today."

Staring down a workload that left a lot to get done each day, she found success by making the most of the down moments in her schedule. 

"I used to tell this to my friends — we laugh about it now — it's about the transitions," the now-graduated senior says with some of that same laughter. "And I was like, you can't dilly-dally between having your snack post-practice and starting your homework. You need to go through it the second you finish those carrots, like go sit down at your desk. I was always thinking, if I'm not speed walking from practice to class, I didn't smush 'em in fast enough."

But for as rushed and time-compressed her daily routine was, Elie found that everything slowed down when she was in the water. 

"What kept me loving swimming is the feeling of floating," said Elie, a three-time MPSF All-Academic honoree. "Water supports you in a way that you can't really find in any other sport. In sports, you're generally running around or kicking a ball or bouncing something, you're just in gravity. And when you move into water you're in a completely different medium. And that type of feeling, you can't really get anywhere else."



GET PAST THE BUSY SCHEDULE and the eye-watering resume, and you'll realize there's more to Elena Elie than what she's achieved in Alcala Park. 

"She has an ironic sense of humor that always surprised me," Malachowski described. 

Elie is quick to smile, easygoing and self-deprecating as much as she is assertive and convincing. It's her interpersonal skills, the way she leads and treats others, that impresses as much as her grade point average and her personal-best times in the water.

"She understood the goals of the team as far as team culture," said Keeler, whose program employs an elaborate vetting process each year to elect captains like Elie. "She was very protective about that and would provide very level-headed advice about how we should approach various situations that arise in the team…usually involving sitting down with someone, reaching out, and having that conversation that needed to be had, which is difficult sometimes."

Beyond the tough conversations and holding herself and others accountable, Elie distills her philosophy down to a single word.

"I try to think of myself as a yes person," she says. "Classes, life relationships, people…to the max. If someone asks me, 'Oh, do you wanna go to Kenya? Oh, do you wanna take this hard class? Do you wanna go swim in the ocean tonight?' 

"I try to say yes."



IN A DAY AND AGE in which the very foundations of college athletics are shifting as rapidly as the indecisive San Diego weather, Elie remains a throwback. You won't find her inking any lucrative Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals anytime soon, nor will you find her entering into the NCAA's transfer portal. Her talents, however, align her in singular fashion with the three pillars that guide USD Athletics: Winning in the Classroom, Winning in the Playing Field, and Winning in the Community.

"It just goes to show you what collegiate athletes, and athletics can really be about," said Keeler, the steward of the department's most academically accomplished program. "It's not gonna be the shiny, shiny objects all the time in athletics, but it can be a great student, a great team experience, and a great athlete all wrapped into one. And there's no reason you can't do it all at a high level and still accomplish it."

She's a scholar-athlete in the truest sense of the term, the rare talent that matches their athletic efforts with identical vigor in the classroom. Elie didn't set out upon this accolade-filled journey to fulfill the NCAA's self-prescribed priorities, though. She may not have studied for her tests with the exact goal of Winning in the Classroom in mind. When she arrived on campus as a freshman, she didn't know what the Alcala Award was, let alone what it would take to earn it. 

And perhaps that's why she found herself filled with emotion and memories back at graduation, sitting in the Jenny Craig Pavilion in her cap and gown, surrounded by her friends and family as she was handed a heavy, diamond-shaped glass trophy of which only four (two to women, two to men) are awarded each year. 

"It makes you reflect and realize all the places that you've bounced around in four years," said Elie, who plans on attending medical school next. "And really appreciate the people and the experience and all the work that you put into it. I just went about doing school and went about swimming and I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think anything of my athletic career, or my academic career, or the things that I've done outside of school...I was just kind of doing me…"

In sometimes-sunny San Diego, a future as bright as can be.